![\"Some](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/345555.jpg\" "\\"Some")
<\/p>\nWASHINGTON, June 10 \u2014 As governments around the world struggle with ways to reverse plunging birth rates, new US studies suggest they have ignored a key culprit \u2014 the smartphone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs the iPhone Birth Control?\u201d asked a paper published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, delving into why US fertility rates have fallen by 22 per cent since 2007.<\/p>\n
For a while, experts linked the decline to the recession that struck in 2008 when the global financial system nearly imploded, driving millions of people into hardship. But when the economy picked up, a rebound in births never came.<\/p>\n
Myriad other reasons have been posited, such as increased use of contraception, more female education, and growing housing or childcare costs. However, no clear cause has been established.<\/p>\n
So Middlebury College economist Caitlin Myers and her student Ezekiel Hooper tested a hypothesis that smartphones \u2014 which emerged with the arrival of the first iPhone in 2007 \u2014 might have something to do with it.<\/p>\n
Until 2011, iPhones were available from a single US cellular network, AT&T, so they compared US counties that had near-universal AT&T coverage with those that had little or none during those years.<\/p>\n
And they found that access to the iPhone correlated with reductions in births by 4.5-8.0 per cent at ages 15-19 and by 3.2-6.6 per cent at ages 20-24.<\/p>\n
There were also statistically significant but smaller declines among older women.<\/p>\n
While they stress that iPhones are not the \u201csole cause,\u201d the introduction of the smartphone \u201cplayed a sizable role in the decline in US births\u201d after 2007 as it shaped people\u2019s behaviour with less in-person contact.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs modern smartphones diffused, time spent with friends in person and sexual activity fell sharply alongside rising consumption of pornography, a possible substitute for partnered sex,\u201d they concluded.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some academics remain sceptical. For example, teenage births in the United States have been falling since the early 1990s, long before the dawn of the smartphone. \u2014 AFP pic<\/p>\n
\u2018Technology shock\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another study published in May by University of Cincinnati economists Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso Boedo found evidence of similar trends and on a global scale since 2007.<\/p>\n
They analysed World Bank data measuring smartphone penetration and teenage fertility rates in 128 countries.<\/p>\n
They found that the decline in birth rates accelerated once smartphones became widely available \u2014 a phenomenon found across countries \u201cwith fundamentally different healthcare, welfare, economic, and cultural environments.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, they concluded, points to \u201ca common global technology shock.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some academics remain sceptical. For example, teenage births in the United States have been falling since the early 1990s, long before the dawn of the smartphone.<\/p>\n
Neither study examines how governments might utilise their findings.<\/p>\n
Both rich and poorer countries are grappling with declining birth rates which lead to aging societies and a shrinking workforce\u2014putting strain on social security systems and potentially dampening economic growth and productivity.<\/p>\n
The Centres for Disease Control says US fertility rates are at an all-time low, while leading Asian economies all face the prospect of shrinking populations in the coming years.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s communist government abandoned its decades-long one-child policy in 2016, while Japan and South Korea have invested heavily in pro-natal policies with little impact.<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s poorest countries, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, often still have high birth rates, but middle-income countries like India and Brazil also face a fast-dropping fertility rates. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, June 10 \u2014 As governments around the world struggle with ways to reverse plunging birth rates, new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[225425,225426,85,46,225424,321,225427,125,62000,730],"class_list":["post-487446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-caitlin-myers","tag-ezekiel-hooper","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-matthew-pennington","tag-mobile","tag-nathan-hudson","tag-technology","tag-university-of-cincinnati","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}